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    Postcards from the Land of Grief
    Postcards from the Land of Grief
    Postcards from the Land of Grief
    Ebook180 pages1 hour

    Postcards from the Land of Grief

    By Richard Littledale

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    About this ebook

    Raw, honest and personal thoughts to comfort you on the journey through grief.

    Grief can often feel like a gnawing homesickness for a place where you used to live, but to which you can never return. Richard Littledale has written a series of short, candid thoughts and reflections from his own experience of widowhood that will resonate and bring comfort and understanding to anyone experiencing bereavement.

    These thoughts are written as postcards from the land of grief, as they are used to convey a message from this foreign country of bereavement. Postcards are, by definition, a small snapshot of a feeling at any one time, not long and drawn out essays, and these thoughts provide an accessible way to identify feelings and draw hope from a fellow traveller.

    Richard also includes practical resources and advice on the grieving process, and reflects on how his faith in God has sustained him. The book is deliberately designed to be able to dip in and out of as required at the point of need. It is also useful for those who want to give a helpful book to comfort a friend, or for anyone wanting to help understand how their bereaved loved one might be feeling.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthentic Media
    Release dateAug 1, 2019
    ISBN9781788930727
    Postcards from the Land of Grief

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      Book preview

      Postcards from the Land of Grief - Richard Littledale

      Littledale

      Part One

      Entering the Land of Grief

      1

      The Chapter I Wanted to Write

      What did you dream of doing when you grew up, I wonder? To be honest, I can’t really remember what I dreamt of. I had a great-uncle who had driven a steam train – and so that probably featured at some point. I would guess that watching the Apollo space missions probably sowed one or two astronaut ambitions in my head too. The odd school play made me dream of acting on the stage, and later studies in English Literature made me think about directing behind it.

      Whatever these dreams might have been, the idea that I might serve as an ordained minister, let alone write a book on my experiences as one, would have been out of the question. Church was not part of my experience in early childhood, and but for the Gideons I would never have visited one. When they came to my secondary school in the hot summer of 1976, they issued a New Testament to every first-year student, with the only requirement being that we should try to read it. I still have it now, the date of its issue written in my schoolboy handwriting, and smudged by an accidental leak from my sports bottle.

      Straight away, I dipped into some of the pages labelled ‘Where to find Help when’, and found that they were indeed helpful. Beyond that, though, I had very little idea how to use this strange book. A teacher suggested at our next assembly that those who were struggling with this unfamiliar book might find some help at the Christian Union, which he ran in one of the science labs at lunchtime. Curious to know more, I started to attend.

      As time went by, that same teacher told those attending the Christian Union that he ran another club at weekends. It was called ‘Crusaders’ and met in the local Baptist church on Sunday afternoons, with occasional extra activities on Saturdays. I started to attend and soon made friends, as well as getting to grips more with the Bible. Out of curiosity, I attended a service of believer’s baptism at the church. Whilst much of what took place was unfamiliar, I was impressed immediately with the sincerity of those who were declaring their faith in this way. I continued to attend and found that the same sincerity was there every week – in the welcomers on the door, the preachers at the front and the leaders of the church’s youth group. Over time, I would come to understand the deep and genuine Christian faith which made them all behave this way – and I would embrace it for myself. At the age of 16, I underwent believer’s baptism and looked to see where God would lead me next.

      Two years later, I left home to study at the University of St Andrews. Like every other Scottish university at the time, my offer of a place to study was from my chosen Faculty, rather than any particular subject. Consequently, I began my university career studying French, German and Arabic. My relationship with the latter would prove to be short-lived. Overwhelmed by the new alphabet, and not at all sure that it was for me, I exchanged Arabic for Theology, and thus began a path which would affect the rest of my life. I would go on to read Biblical Studies alongside the foreign languages in my second year, and would opt for a combined degree in French and Practical Theology.

      After my third year of study, I took a year out to use my French in the context of church-based mission in Belgium. The experience refined my understanding of what church and mission were all about – and made me appreciate the nuanced challenges of communicating across cultures and languages. There were lessons I learned when crossing a linguistic gap in my stumbling French which I would later employ when crossing other gaps in English. So often, the first part of speaking is listening. It was also in Belgium that I started learning to preach – an interesting challenge in a foreign language. To this day, I still preach from very longhand notes – a habit which I formed when every word had to be carefully chosen and remembered!

      Back home from Belgium, and now engaged to be married, it was time to think about the future. Maybe it was inevitable that my combined studies should affect my choice of career. The young man who had entered university wanting to train as a theatre director no longer found the idea so appealing. Perhaps I should pursue an avenue which would make more direct use of my studies and provide a more obvious outlet for my growing appetite for theology? The trouble is, I had always believed that it was a mistake when people went directly from university into training for ordained ministry without an intervening period in the workplace. I bided my time and waited for the obvious workplace door to swing open. It did not. By the time I was in my last year at St Andrews, my sense of conviction about ministry was growing stronger by the day. Convinced that I should demonstrate my willingness to embrace this surprising calling, I cancelled all my applications for other jobs and applied to train for Baptist ministry.

      At this point in my life I had the most wonderful woman, Fiona, by my side. Our relationship had started shortly before I left for Belgium – and had stood the tests which distance imposed upon it. Now both in the same country again, we knew that our paths belonged together, but had no certainty about where they would lead. We had a date to get married, but no job or home to go to. God would provide.

      I think it would be fair to say that pursuing a lifetime’s calling by payphone from Scotland proved to be something of a challenge. If I thought that my hurried phone call, with the wind off the North Sea rattling the phone box windows, would sort out the future direction of my life, I was wrong. After numerous trips down south and a searching interview or two, I finally secured a place as a ‘ministerial apprentice’ at Hertford Baptist Church. Fiona and I got married in Fife, took our honeymoon on the island of Islay, and then moved all our worldly goods into a terraced cottage in our trusty VW Beetle. This was where the calling to ministry would be proved . . . or

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